• kofe@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    Wait what the bloody fuck? I haven’t heard anything about this. Sounds right up their alley, but what evidence is it based on?

    • Retreaux@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      If you look up the practical application of Shadow profiles they have the ability to gather information about non-users, which also includes unborn children in the case of them discovering that the mother is pregnant through whatever web searches that they may be doing even outside of Facebook. The whole science of Shadow profiles used to strengthen the algorithm is incredibly frightening and part of the reason why I left Facebook.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        35 minutes ago

        I can almost excuse shadow profiles for things like “two people both have X contact in their phone”, but making them for unborn children? Lord have mercy. That’s genuinely crazy. It makes me wonder if it’s something like they just marked someone as pregnant based on searches (weird, but maybe acceptable, idk) and it got taken out of context? Hopefully? Either way it’s icky.

    • ditty@lemm.ee
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      22 hours ago

      I hadn’t heard of this either but here’s an article about Facebook keeping shadow profiles on non-users that references an article from 2012 where Target’s data collection determined a teen girl was pregnant before she told her dad